The Mo-ment Ali’s career turned bright

“I’LL tell you what – he has just taken 100 Test wickets as an off-spinner, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have taken any as a medium-pacer,” laughs former Warwickshire bowling coach, Steve Perryman, a man who England owe a large vote of thanks.

Moeen Ali’s 10 wickets at Lord’s not only brought up his century of England scalps, it also, perhaps for good, consigned his reputation as a part-time spinner to history. None of that, however, would have been possible without the intervention of Perryman, who transformed the then 15-year-old Moeen from a bits and pieces bowler into a performer who is rapidly becoming one of cricket’s most influential all-rounders.

“I was doing a lot of the bowling work at Warwickshire and he was in the academy at the time,” Perryman tells The Cricket Paper. “He was always talented as a batter but he bowled these medium-pacers that were pretty innocuous. He was skilful but it wasn’t going to take him anywhere.

“We started to get him to bowl off-cutters and when he did that you could see that he got some real revs on the ball. I had seen enough and I told him he had much more mileage and potential as an off-spinner because, longterm, his medium pace wasn’t going to be of any benefit to him.

“He might have bowled a few overs in one-day cricket but that would have been it. It certainly wouldn’t have got him anywhere near the England side.”

For a supremely gifted and natural cricketer, Moeen took to his new trade almost immediately, developing the kind of classical action that has brought him so much success for England over the past four seasons.

And whereas it might have taken some bowlers some time to hone an almost entirely new technique, Moeen made it look as though he had been bowling off-spin for the best part of his early career.

“He had such a natural, fluent action and his skill levels were good, too,” says Perryman. “He worked at it and he took it on board. It was all long-term planning really and as long as he got the opportunity to bowl then he was always going to develop.

“It wasn’t physically as demanding bowling his spinners and he has found his niche now. He has probably batted a bit lower than he would have liked but I think it’s his bowling that has given him his career, really.

“As a pure batter, I’m not sure he would have played as much for England but as an off-spinner batter then he has become an absolutely essential part of this side. He’s the same now as he was then, too. He was always a very low maintenance cricketer, he just got on with things.”

It has never been hard to put a positive spin on Moeen’s influence but without Perryman things might have turned out very differently.